Aggrieved workers in Guyana faced with industrial relations disputes over conditions of service are rarely afforded the opportunity to secure the focused and structured attention of the media. Journalists, not infrequently, find more ‘newsworthiness’ in engaging bureaucrats, be they trade unionists or state officials, or else, covering boisterous and animated labour-driven protest. That apart, effective worker representation has, over the past two decades and more, fallen victim to labour’s considerable underperformance, while workers’ rights have suffered further injury on account of the increasing disinclination on the parts of both the state and the private sector to enthusiastically embrace collective bargaining.
When, on Thursday last, the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) used its first press conference for 2017 to provide sweeper/cleaners (surely a more uplifting title can be found with which to classify this category of public servant) with the opportunity to speak directly to the media, the move may well have caught both the government and the public by surprise. In so doing, the GPSU was, in a sense, acknowledging what, up until then, had been the failure of its own efforts to get the government to budge in the matter of remedying the conditions of service of the sweeper/cleaners.
Afforded the opportunity to make their case directly to the public in the controlled environment of a media encounter, the sweeper/cleaners let neither themselves nor the union down. They departed entirely from the approach which the union leaders themselves might have taken, getting down to what one might call the nitty gritty. It was a poignant lesson to their audiences, including the government, about how the other half lives.
In exposing the sweeper/cleaners directly to the court of public opinion the GPSU reflected its awareness of the fact that the issue is as much a humanitarian concern as it is an industrial relations one. The union’s approach embraced the adage effectively articulated in Bob Marley’s timeless musical offering, “He who feels it, knows it.” It may well have worked and if it doesn’t, that would not be to the government’s credit.
The point should be made too that the fact that this is an inherited problem does not render the present administration’s failure, up until now, to take remedial action, any more excusable. The GPSU, quite correctly, makes the point not only that bringing a measure of relief to the sweeper/cleaners was a pre-elections commitment on the part of the government, but also that there exists a trail of sorts that might be followed towards the satisfactory conclusion of this matter. The negligence of the previous administration in allowing the issue to fester does not gainsay the fact that it left behind a cabinet decision which the GPSU says it wishes to see implemented.
In a society where women’s rights have become a fashionable platform for public advocacy, the GPSU is perfectly correct in its description of the plight of sweeper/cleaners as “a badge of shame” that has left an ugly scar on a professed state policy of equality for women. Sweeper/cleaners are mothers, single parents mostly, who must, every day, undertake the back-breaking task of cleaning schools (toilets, stairways, corridors and classrooms, among other areas) populated by thousands of children and teachers who, for all we know, mostly give little thought to the physical exertions that go into providing this critical service as part of the overall process of effective education delivery. All too often, sweeper/cleaners must deliver their services without demonstrable protest, in what, frequently, is a far less than convivial environment characterized by, among other things, an absence of the fundamental convenience of running water (one sweeper/cleaner told this newspaper that it was “no joke” to have to fetch buckets of water up several flights of stairs in order to clean the upper floor of the school to which she is assigned) and what, in several cases, are inadequate supplies of cleaning materials and equipment. During the rainy periods when hundreds of pairs of muddy shoes find their way along corridors and into classrooms and other spaces, the sweeper/cleaner’s job becomes a nightmare.
In the absence of any more attractive options, many of our state-employed sweeper/cleaners have been enduring these conditions for periods exceeding fifteen years, with pay levels that have never reached the national minimum wage and conditions of service that take no account of considerations like annual vacation, maternity leave and sick leave with pay, which other public servants enjoy. Some complain of what they say are the excessive demands of regional administrators and in some instances, heads of schools and teachers who seek to push the boundaries of the sweeper/cleaners’ job descriptions beyond that which is officially designated. Small pockets of protest involving the withholding of their labour have reportedly collapsed under threats from officialdom.
Proceeding on the principle that justice delayed is justice denied, there is a case for placing blame for the persistence of the problem at the feet of the present administration, bearing in mind that it is already on record acknowledging the existing anomalous situation. In effect, it has taken far too long to change the status quo, a circumstance that has left it exposed to accusations of insensitivity.
On Thursday the GPSU announced that it was allowing a two-week ultimatum for a full resolution of the sweeper/cleaner issue. The significance of the ultimatum, however, is unclear since what customarily follows are excursions into strident if meaningless verbal exchanges that fail to result in corrective outcomes. All things considered, the eminently preferable option would be for the government to change for the better the conditions of service of these disgracefully undervalued public servants without any further delay.
